Driven by the application of sensors, AI, big data and IoT technologies, smart agriculture has developed rapidly in Taiwan, and a spate of latest smart agricultural solutions unveiled by academic research groups at the just-concluded Futex Taipei 2019 are expected to help accelerate upgrades and transformation in the farming sector.
The solutions were showcased at the smart agricultural biotech section debuting at this year's edition of the annual event, hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to enhance collaboration in developing future technologies and applications among industry, academy and research sectors.
Among them is a non-toxic AI-based smart farming system, developed by a research team from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU). The system can be linked to a smartphone app allowing farmers of turmeric roots to monitor and adjust plant growth environments such as pest and disease control, soil fertility, moisture, light and temperature. The system can be applied to grow high-value root vegetable for herbal medicine.
Another solution, developed by a team from National Taiwan Normal University, leverages AI algorithms, optical signals, and big data analysis to conduct fast and automatic detection of orchid diseases without damaging the plants and culture flasks. The team has cooperated with major orchid farms to promote the solution, which can be integrated with more sensors to form a plant growth IoT system.
There was also a cyber-physical sensing (CPS) 3D stereo modeling for fruit tree growth monitoring, presented by another team from NCTU. The core technologies include lightweight UAV, heterogeneous sensor integration, obstacle avoidance, group flight automatic flight control, RTK precision positioning system, and fruit tree 3D stereo modeling, which can be used to establish a 3D fruit tree growth process.